New Ventures Blog

Announcing Macmillan New Ventures

We need better ways to scale classroom intimacy. One-to-one aha moments are being replaced by one-to-many information spewing sessions. We need better ways to get to students who learn in different ways, and check their understanding along the way. We need a better way to harness student data spun out from the myriad of tools and systems our students use and make that data actionable for teachers and administrators.

Our mission is to discover, develop and market innovative technologies that target learning and learning institutions.

We have a mandate and the resources from Macmillan, a leading publisher of printed and digital content, to support this push.

We’re a team of entrepreneurs, technologists and managers that believe that education is the next frontier.

Over the past year, we’ve brought to market and facilitated widespread adoption of a number of transformative classroom technologies, including:

i>clicker for enabling active learning and formative assessment in the classroom

We’re meeting with potential partners with whom we can develop, license or buy game-changing learning technologies. Let us know if you’re interested in talking.

We’re based in New York City and spend a healthy part of our year on the road. Stop by our open Office Hours at General Assembly from 10am–12 noon on the second Monday of every month to say hi and tell us about what you’re working on.

EBI Joins Macmillan New Ventures

We have some exciting news to share! We are thrilled to announce that Macmillan New Ventures has acquired a new portfolio company, Educational Benchmarking, Inc.

Educational Benchmarking, Inc (EBI) is a retention and student success system. EBI helps give administrators actionable information from the loads and loads of student data that is available to them. This way, administrators and instructors can track performance and identify at-risk students that need intervention like tutoring or counseling.

Retention and student success systems are a vital part of the emerging data-driven education system. Only 56% of college students complete a four-year degree within six years, and only 29% of those who start a two-year degree finish within three years. We need tools and services that bolster our efforts to keep students in school until graduation.

We spent all last year looking at every retention system in the market, and came to the conclusion that EBI’s MAP-Works is the best product out there. We were inspired by their team, their vision, and their results.

This acquisition is the first of a number we are planning over the next year. Stay tuned!

Find yourself with five minutes to spare on your morning commute? Download PrepU’s new adaptive learning mobile apps for advanced placement (AP) History and AP Psychology.

PrepU, the online adaptive assessment platform built by educators, gives students a much better way to learn on-thego. PrepU’s mobile applications allows students to study anywhere they have a phone and an internet connection; and they put all of the smarts of PrepU’s adaptive assessment platform right at students’ fingertips.

With over 50 million questions answered on the PrepU platform to date, each question in the PrepU engine has been precisely calibrated by the responses of countless previous student quiz-takers. The apps come pre-loaded with thousands of questions, boasting better subject matter coverage and quizzing scenarios than most other AP prep tools.

At Macmillan New Ventures, we believe strongly that students should be able to study at their own pace, whenever they feel compelled -- ten minutes in between classes, at lunch, or after lacrosse practice now becomes a great way to keep your mind sharp and ace upcoming exams.

We’re very proud of PrepU’s strategic push to cater to students’ fast-paced, mobile-centric lifestyles; and we hope to see more great subjects coming to more mobile devices very soon.

Florida International University Adopts the iclicker2

Today, we announced that Florida International University (FIU) has chosen i>clicker2 as its centrally supported classroom response system.

Our i>clicker2 remote is the latest in our remote products that enhances the classroom experience for both teachers and students. We couldn’t be happier that FIU chose us, and that i>clicker2 integration has been rolled out across the University system comprised of more than 47,000 students.

With increased functionality, the newly enhanced i>clicker2 remote opens up new possibilities for classroom interaction with full alphanumeric functionality and an LCD screen. What really makes us proud is that FIU decided after independently surveying the market that i>clicker2 would enhance both their curriculum and benefit their students.

i>clicker has been adopted at over 1,100 educational institutions in North America and is used by over 2.7 million students. FIU continues to support our technology based on i>clicker2’s feature-rich interface, its ease of integration with campus systems, and its affordability for students.

i>clicker is just one part of the learning ecosystem that we are creating at Macmillan New Ventures. We’ve seen how increasing and encouraging engagement between students and faculty, especially in large classes, dramatically reduces failure rates and raises the performance of all students in the course.